In my help section on Trolls & Trolling, I included a section on what I chose to call AI Trolls, and thought I might clarify that.
As I see it, these are not usually people who intend to harm the forum, although some of them want to be viewed as being more intelligent than they think they are.
They might just want to be sure that they are being accurate, and society is quickly being conditioned to accept AI as the arbiter of truth.
However, I have added that here because the misuse of AI in discussion forums can easily be the death of a forum.
The whole point of a forum, such as this one, is to be able to have conversations with people roughly our own age from the comfort of our home computer or tablet.
While we don't want to be lied to, and we may value accurate information, that's not what we come here for. If we were simply looking for information, we could ask ChatGPT, CoPilot, Grok, or one of the other free or paid AI programs that are available to us.
If I am discussing something on the forum, I am looking for replies from other forum members, not something that is copied and pasted from an AI program. Even people who might not be able to say definitively that something was created by AI can often recognize that something is off, even if we don't know specifically what it is.
Some of you don't like debate-type threads, and that's okay, but those of us who do would like to be able to feel as if we're debating another forum member, not an AI program.
There is also the fact that AI is not the definitive answer to a question that some people might think it is. AI programs make stuff up all the time, and they do so in such a way that they sound authoritative, which adds to the discomfort felt by someone trying to discuss a topic with someone who is copying and pasting AI stuff.
As with many of the other types of trolls, not every usage of AI is trolling behavior. While I think the world would be a better place for people had AI never been invented, no one is going to put that back in the bottle, so we're stuck with it.
Since it's here, there are legitimate uses for it, perhaps even in a discussion forum. If you want to use AI to research some facts for you on a subject that you already have an idea of, just as someone might otherwise have used a search engine or another informational source, that's okay as long as AI isn't making the argument for you or deciding what the argument should be.
I'd still rather have a conversation with someone who is speaking from what they know, but it's not necessarily trolling behavior to ask AI for a fact.
However, the overuse of AI comes into play when you're using AI rather than your own brain, or when what you are posting is AI text rather than your own words.
I don't expect everyone to be an expert in everything here, and I hope you don't expect me to be right about everything, even if I am.
We're not writing textbooks here, we're not saving lives, and we're certainly not saving the world. Hopefully, we're serving some purpose, and I think we'd all like to believe that the people we're talking with here aren't lying to us or simply making stuff up, but no one is going to die if you're wrong about something.
Admittedly, I don't know much about being wrong about stuff, but no one should ever be made to feel humiliated because they got a fact wrong. We're living in a world where we're being lied to all the time, so we shouldn't place such a demand on ourselves that we have to let AI carry on our discussions for us.
I use Grammarly for spelling and grammatical errors, and I sometimes look something up before stating it as a fact here, and if you want to turn to AI from time to time, that's not what I'm referring to as AI trolling.
I have a paid version of an AI that I use in my work every day, but I don't sit behind my computer and have conversations with it. I'd like to come here for that.
As I see it, these are not usually people who intend to harm the forum, although some of them want to be viewed as being more intelligent than they think they are.
They might just want to be sure that they are being accurate, and society is quickly being conditioned to accept AI as the arbiter of truth.
However, I have added that here because the misuse of AI in discussion forums can easily be the death of a forum.
The whole point of a forum, such as this one, is to be able to have conversations with people roughly our own age from the comfort of our home computer or tablet.
While we don't want to be lied to, and we may value accurate information, that's not what we come here for. If we were simply looking for information, we could ask ChatGPT, CoPilot, Grok, or one of the other free or paid AI programs that are available to us.
If I am discussing something on the forum, I am looking for replies from other forum members, not something that is copied and pasted from an AI program. Even people who might not be able to say definitively that something was created by AI can often recognize that something is off, even if we don't know specifically what it is.
Some of you don't like debate-type threads, and that's okay, but those of us who do would like to be able to feel as if we're debating another forum member, not an AI program.
There is also the fact that AI is not the definitive answer to a question that some people might think it is. AI programs make stuff up all the time, and they do so in such a way that they sound authoritative, which adds to the discomfort felt by someone trying to discuss a topic with someone who is copying and pasting AI stuff.
As with many of the other types of trolls, not every usage of AI is trolling behavior. While I think the world would be a better place for people had AI never been invented, no one is going to put that back in the bottle, so we're stuck with it.
Since it's here, there are legitimate uses for it, perhaps even in a discussion forum. If you want to use AI to research some facts for you on a subject that you already have an idea of, just as someone might otherwise have used a search engine or another informational source, that's okay as long as AI isn't making the argument for you or deciding what the argument should be.
I'd still rather have a conversation with someone who is speaking from what they know, but it's not necessarily trolling behavior to ask AI for a fact.
However, the overuse of AI comes into play when you're using AI rather than your own brain, or when what you are posting is AI text rather than your own words.
I don't expect everyone to be an expert in everything here, and I hope you don't expect me to be right about everything, even if I am.
We're not writing textbooks here, we're not saving lives, and we're certainly not saving the world. Hopefully, we're serving some purpose, and I think we'd all like to believe that the people we're talking with here aren't lying to us or simply making stuff up, but no one is going to die if you're wrong about something.
Admittedly, I don't know much about being wrong about stuff, but no one should ever be made to feel humiliated because they got a fact wrong. We're living in a world where we're being lied to all the time, so we shouldn't place such a demand on ourselves that we have to let AI carry on our discussions for us.
I use Grammarly for spelling and grammatical errors, and I sometimes look something up before stating it as a fact here, and if you want to turn to AI from time to time, that's not what I'm referring to as AI trolling.
I have a paid version of an AI that I use in my work every day, but I don't sit behind my computer and have conversations with it. I'd like to come here for that.
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